


Poco a Poco

by htebazytook



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Music & Bands, Classical Music, Drinking Games, First Time, Humor, Laundry room sex, Love/Hate, M/M, Smut, orchestra AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-27
Updated: 2011-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:32:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/htebazytook/pseuds/htebazytook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>College AU.  Haven't you always wondered what Zach and Chris would be like in conservatory?  Okay, maybe that was just me.  Shamelessly pretentious and self-indulgent, with a generous helping of musical terminology.  And of course slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poco a Poco

_**Poco a Poco**_  
 **Title:** Poco a Poco  
 **Author:** [](http://htebazytook.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://htebazytook.livejournal.com/)**htebazytook**  
 **Rating:** R  
 **Disclaimer:** <\--  
 **Pairing:** Zach/Chris  
 **Author's Notes:** College AU. Haven't you always wondered what Zach and Chris would be like in conservatory? Okay, maybe that was just me. Shamelessly pretentious and self-indulgent, with a generous helping of musical terminology. And of course slash.

Mozart drifts tauntingly through the walls of the practice room. Stolen Mozart, at that. He'd written the Concerto in C for oboe—one of the few bits of decent repertoire that was post-Baroque and pre-Hindemith.

But then it had been stolen. Taken in the dead of night to feed the unquenchable thirst of the flautists of the world for dominance over the woodwinds, the entire orchestra, and incidentally, _the world_.

Or, more specifically, Mozart had lazily transposed it up to D for some spoiled Viennese flautist or other, whited out the title and declared it a brand spanking new flute concerto.

And flutes, of course, could play it faster. And they cheated—or at least _this_ flute was cheating, slurring sloppily all over the music like it was going out of style. It didn't sound like an awkward, technically demanding exercise in oboe acrobatics—it sounded like a fluid little flute gigue, played perfectly as little more than an afterthought. It made Zach's kind look bad. It wasn't _fair_.

Zach sighs and puts the part way, gets a quiet reed out and drills Tombeau in the interim. The flute would have to move on eventually.

Three movements later and the flute's finally ceased. Zach digs his part out again, hearing in the background the trademark warm-up of the flute who'd landed principal in orchestra. 'Orchestra' went without saying—only the upperclassmen who the conductors knew enough to form opinions and favoritisms about got to advance from the ranks of band to orchestra.

It took most oboists less time than others to make the jump, but this was only Zach's first year in orchestra, and he was a junior. No matter though—he didn't relish the thought of co-piloting the woodwinds with some ever-infuriating, illegally-obtained-Mozart-playing flautist asshole.

*

Male flautists were either super gay or super talented straight boys. Or Korean. But all were badass. You kind of had to be.

And there they were, Chris Pine of the super talented and straight variety and John Cho of the instant musical esteem that came with his heritage. Everybody assumed that the Koreans scattered through their ranks were the Jedi masters of music, and , annoyingly, they usually were.

"Pretty sure he's fucked the whole viola section," Zach says from the door to the orchestra room.

Zoë waves it off as best she can with a French horn case over her shoulder. "They're bimbos, who gives a fuck?" She looks at him. "Wait, who?"

"First flute."

"Ah," Zoë says. "Yeah, he's kind of an asshole."

"They polish their goddamn instruments."

"Pretty sure a tarnished as fuck horn doesn't effect _our_ tone." She joins him in glaring at the flutes. "They're _all_ douchebags. Even the girls. They're all those smarmy, nice to your face but stab you in the back bitches."

They stand there while string players flow around them, hastening to their seats. Chris and John are laughing about something, polishing their instruments up and down in a fittingly metaphorical fashion. "Look at them," Zach says. "It's disgusting."

"Mm. Come on, Tchaik is first and you've gotta tune, don't you?"

They go their separate ways, Zoë off to the risers behind the woodwind block and Zach to the front and center, into the belly of the beast.

Zach unpacks in silence, delicately placing his water-filled prescription bottle on the left side of his stand to avoid any careless flautist disasters, pops three neon-threaded reeds in and holds the top joint of his oboe to warm it up, wary of cracks here at the onset of autumn.

The bassoons are gossiping and the trumpets are doing diligent pedal tones. Zach hears it all like white noise. Far from Zoë and forced to sit there and let fancy grenadilla wood absorb his body heat at its own reluctant pace. A slutty viola pulls her skirt down a bit, to no real avail. The flutes start rehearsing their à deux bits. All the clamor that they as musicians spend years and lessons and classes learning to properly analyze and dissect, and Zach hears nothing but a wall of noise. And he waits.

It's a bit of a post-lunch blur up until tuning, but Zach grabs a reed while the unknown baby concertmaster stares him down and their new conductor J.J. stands with his hands clasped politely up on the podium, smiling around at the orchestra.

And Zach is just playing an A, minding his own business when there's a flute playing one an octave and about three dynamic markings over him. He looks over as best he can, peripherals straining to see Chris there with his flute at attention, plaid hipster shirt and artfully sculpted hair and just starting straight ahead with frighteningly blue, frighteningly attentive eyes. Zach gets the impression from his posture alone that Zach's mere existence is offensive to him.

But the rest of the winds chime in, and the other sections follow, and soon Zach's forgotten all about it.

The nice thing about playing well-known rep, Zach thinks, is that everyone knows the piece and rehearsal isn't hindered by a lot of guesswork—and he thinks that right up until the trumpets come in a full measure early about 10 seconds in.

"Oh Jesus," Zach sighs. Even the timpanist has promptly head-desked. Or, more accurately, head-timpani'd.

Counting the piece was harder than he'd thought. Of course he _knew_ Tchaik 4. Knew the gorgeous Muti recording with Philly, and Karajan, and of _course_ he knew the solos, but he'd never really understood just how the beats fell, before. It was confusing to count for everyone, and everyone confused didn't make it any easier for him to decide who to follow.

He comes in hesitantly, and then something bad happens in the cellos, and the clarinet comes in all wrong and the orchestra grinds pathetically to a halt.

"Flute one," J.J. says, unreadable. Not exactly _yelling_ , but . . . "You missed your entrance."

"First oboe came in wrong," Chris says bluntly while they all stare dutifully ahead at J.J. "I was trying to keep the integrity of the line."

Zach seethes. If the violins hadn't decided to switch inexplicably to five for a measure or two he would've come in just fucking _fine_ . . .

"Okay!" J.J. says, clearly thinking of about a hundred things at once. "Pickup to 122!"

Zach does come in correctly this time, tutti with Chris, and Chris clearly takes great pleasure in overblowing as if to cover up any of Zach's potential mishaps.

They've just passed measure 240 when the cringeworthy chord hits. Zach's pretty sure a clarinet's missed an accidental.

J.J. cuts them off and works with the strings.

Chris stares straight ahead, blinking through the intensity of it at the page in front of him and marking something efficiently in his part. "Winds, I think we need to tune that chord, just for us. You know the one." He turns in his seat to include the rest of the woodwinds in his address. "Okay? Yeah. First oboe?"

"Zach."

"Yep, it's right on your folder, there," Chris says curtly. Turns his focus on him and Zach's nowhere near prepared for the force of it. Chris's face is a little acne-scarred and a lot no-nonsense. "E-flat please," he says.

Zach fumbles for his tuner, plays an E-flat.

Chris sighs throatily. "Uh, next _octave_?"

Zach slams down the octave key with more force than is strictly necessary.

The rest of the movement isn't so bad. The orchestra seems to decide collectively to just play everything by ear and follow the dominant section no matter what. J.J.'s pattern fizzles out a couple of times because of this, but they do make it to the end okay, with only one cracked note in the brass fanfare.

By the time they reach the end, although out of tune in places and too under tempo to be respectable by any standards, the music's become exhilarating and doomful and lush in a way that only Tchaikovsky can write. That heart-racing intimacy of performance, that heat of the moment that brings them together so fragilely and spits them back out so beautifully violent. Hot shivers rush up Zach's spine in the breathless pause before J.J. lowers his baton. Everyone breathes again.

J.J. dismisses them, and papers shuffle and people escape to their next class as if they hadn't just engaged in some indistinct orgy.

Zach hears Chris's case click closed, catches sight of him and instantly forgets any post-musical bonelessness.

"So uh, thanks for the master class back there, _maestro_ ," Zach mutters.

"Oh, no problem, Zach," Chris says loudly. "And I must say I'm chuffed you think I'm 'maestro'-worthy."

"Ha. Uh huh. Sure."

"Seriously, what's your problem, man? You threatened by a girly as fuck flautist? Really?"

Zach looks at him. Chris is far from girly. He's got the kind of biceps that stretch his cardigan out just slightly, and discernible scruff, and, well, okay, his eyes are awfully lashy and blue, aren't they? "Just don't think we need to be told to tune it up in the first fucking rehearsal, that's all."

"Well flutes _are_ the wind section leaders."

Zach sputters. "Since when?"

"Uhm . . . since equal temperament?"

Zach laughs. " _Right_. Who gives the tuning note?"

Chris laughs right back. "Who's listed first in score order?"

"Yeah? Well . . . well! Flutes aren't even _made_ of wood anymore, you fucking poser!"

"Is _that_ made of wood?" Chris says, about as low a blow as he could've given without actually breaking one of Zach's reeds.

Zach laughs, somewhat hysterically now. Holds up his oboe and goes a little Vanna White on the gesturing. "Oh . . . oh what's that? Does that say 'F Lorée' on the bell there? Is this . . . could it _be_ a 2006 limited edition Royal?"

Chris shrugs, all meanly piercing blueness. "Huh. Wouldn't've known it from your tone." And he stands, and he leaves.

"Yeah, okay, Chris. Go polish your flute or something! Maybe that'll improve _your_ tone . . . "

"Sure as fuck does!" Chris says, words now echoing down the hall past the virgin ears of loitering music ed majors.

*

"Once," Zoë is saying, "sophomore year, he was subbing first on Egmont and he fell out of the chair."

"And there isn't YouTube footage of this?" It would possibly make Zach's _life_ . . .

"He kept muttering about how it should've been bolted to the ground and it wasn't his fault and all this other bullshit. We had a good old laugh with the percussion studio."

"And his flute was okay?"

"Uh, no. Why do you think he has that new mouthpiece?"

Zach feels a pang of sympathy—the death of an instrument was no laughing matter. Then he thinks of Chris practicing perfectly on the second floor earlier and it dissolves pretty quick.

"Why do you hate him so much, anyway? I mean, he's a dick, but who isn't? We're _performance_ majors, you know. We're all dicks."

"The rivalry that we have is really rooted to the mastery of the Mozart Oboe Concerto," Zach says.

"Isn't that a flute concerto?"

Zach allows a threatening pause. " _No_."

Zoë snorts. "Uh huh. Good luck with that. And uh, try not to go Jersey Housewives on us today. I don't think J.J. would appreciate it." She pats Zach's arm and retreats to her section.

Zach finds his seat in the orchestra. Chris isn't there yet, and he's not sure if he should be grateful or just doubly anxious. John's there though, flubbing the piccolo run in the scherzo. The shocking humanity of it cheers Zach up a little.

Sometimes Zach really wished he was Asian just to really fit in. The assumption that he'd be vastly talented as a result wouldn't hurt, either. God knew John Cho reaped the benefits. And sure, the Koreans had their technique down, but when it came to musicality Chris Pine outshone John every time. Chris may have had a gold headjoint, but he might as well have played on a shitty student model and saved some money. Just obnoxiously talented.

Chris walks up with J.J. to stand amid empty violin chairs and talk. Zach keeps his head down and organizes his reed-making supplies.

". . . glad you auditioned again. I know you were thinking about Cleveland, and—"

Chris smiles in a fake interviewy way. "Thanks for asking me back, maestro." And J.J. nods and is gone.

John plays the crazy piccolo part at half-speed while Chris takes his seat. Chris scoffs at him. "You haven't got it up to tempo yet? That _was_ you in master class, right? Not that sophomore Jiyoung?"

John rolls his eyes. "You wanna sub in? Be my guest. Here, you can look off my part for the third movement."

Chris shrugs, snatches John's piccolo and plays the part flawlessly, tongued exactingly crisp and subdivided with rather stunning accuracy. Hands the piccolo back to John, who looks simultaneously pissed and awed.

Zach considers Chris's Yankees hat. "You know we're in Pittsburgh, right?"

Chris laughs. "Hadn't noticed, hot boys."

"Hautbois."

"Sure, and _they_ aren't faggots." Chris jerks a thumb back at the thankfully empty bassoon chairs.

"You're about as mature as a trumpet player, you know that?"

Chris gasps. "You wound me!"

Zach sighs. "Just because this is CMU, land of the engineering majors, doesn't mean you can go around wearing a non-Pirates hat."

"Looks like it does." Chris says it across his mouthpiece and turns his words tonal. Eyes wide with focus as he fingers a run. Apparently satisfied, he puts his flute on his stand—terribly precarious—and turns to Zach, who's been watching Chris with knife and reed in hand but has yet to actually scrape anything.

Chris nods at Zach's immobility. "That's how you get your reeds so easy?"

Zach almost cuts himself in the scramble to start scraping.

"So . . . second movement today, huh? You ready for it? It's quite a key . . . "

Zach snorts, digs into the heart of the reed with his knife. "I think I can handle it. It's kinda one of our biggest excerpts."

"So is La Scala di Seta and I have yet to play it with an oboist who can keep up with our part in the tutti."

Chris has turned that bright unforgiving attention of his on Zach again. Zach nearly hacks off a corner while trying to collect his thoughts. "Yeah, well, most of us aren't taught to double tongue from the time we can talk."

Chris doesn't respond right away, and Zach can hear the click of keys as Chris fingers his part absently. "I mean, I've been in a lot of shitty ensembles. Church gigs and high school musical pits and like shitty community orchestras who are desperate for any flute that can actually read music. I guess I have somewhat lowered expectations of oboists."

"Well, yeah, shitty oboists are fucking nefarious."

" . . . Nefarious."

"Eh, that's not quite it. More like repugnant. Macabre, even. Something . . . "

Chris is silent for a minute, then sounds surprised to hear a short little laugh escape his lips.

When the concertmaster (Anton, Zach now knew—spoiled, Russian imported freshmen prodigy that he is) stands importantly from his seat by the podium, Zach overblows the tuning note so hard it cracks like a clarinet, but Chris doesn't even come in until the rest of the oboes have adjusted to Zach, and when he does come in, its quiet but full and blended beautifully. John chimes in shrilly with the piccolo and Chris mutters something to him, gestures at a resonance key on his flute and then falls obediently silent while the other sections tune, looking straight ahead with his bright attentive look.

By the time the strings are playing the last of their Appalachian Spring-y fourths, lazy gravelly double stops and the woozy bend of pitches as they tune, Zach feels the anxiety set in. He flips to the second movement clumsily, wets his reed, wipes unhelpfully sweaty palms on his jeans, alternates sucking on the reed and fiddling with it, opening it more and then closing it more and unable to stop the cycle of nervous little adjustments.

J.J.'s baton's up now, and he's smiling right at Zach and the strings are poised for pizzicato and staring and the other oboes are jealous and wishing him ill, probably, and _watching_ along with the other winds who all knew how important this solo was in oboe repertoire. Even the timpanist manages to lounge on his stool and look on expectantly. John's leaned back enough to see him from behind the first and second flute chairs, and Chris just sits properly upright with flute properly at rest in his lap and eyes properly glued to J.J., and Zach's pathetically grateful.

Zach breathes in long before J.J.'s mid-measure upbeat, fingers hard on the awkward alternate fingering of the first note. He tongues lightly with the correct air pressure, just like they'd practiced for about an hour in master class.

Nothing comes out.

Innocuous, suddenly soli pizzicato fills the room and before Zach can get his bearing, his second chair Olivia hustes to pick up the line, too loud and missing the A-flat and fuck, did she even understand that the point of tuning was to _stay_ in tune for longer than the duration of tuning itself?

Zach just sits there, frozen, reed in mouth and Anton's eyes are saucers as he continues to pluck out notes, and Zach might actually melt of shame and self loathing and failure (you suck, you suck, _you still suck_ ) into his chair, and his acidly hateful remains would eat through the floor to rain down on the chorus rehearsal below, killing them all like the Hartford Circus Fire. Which was a small, if demented, comfort.

During his horrified daze the solo concludes and Chris says, " _Wow_ ," loudly before his own entrance. Someone laughs and Olivia emanates smugness.

The orchestra continues, well-oiled machine of procedure and training and ancient etiquette that it is, until the violas do something funky and J.J. stops to explain the Alto Clef to them or whatever.

Chris leans closer to Zach, does that subsonic rehearsal whispery thing at him. "That was a pretty dick move, dude."

"Whatever," Zach whispers back. "It's not the concert."

"For what it's worth, I still prefer your silent rendition to whatever the fuck _that_ was."

Zach smiles, staring J.J. down now, willing him to stay 'From the top!' and allow Zach to exact his revenge. Or, you know, to play a pretty little Romantic ditty. Whichever.

Zach gets his chance soon enough, and he plays the solo admirably all in one breath, which no mere _flute_ could ever do, he might add. And he's pleased as the music continues around him, gasping for air quietly and forcing himself to sit still while the black spots in his vision fade. He's pleased now, but that moment of commiseration with a stuck-up flautist hadn't hurt, either.

After rehearsal, after Olivia and most of the other winds have gone, Chris says, "You know she sits first on the Chopin."

"Pretty sure our entire studio and their dog knows that, yeah."

Chris laughs. "Karl sounds amazing, of course, and not even the tragically out of tune baby grand in here seems to faze him, but then this one time he was zoning out during a ritornello and Olivia honked something, supposedly pianissimo, and Karl got this look on his face like he just bit into wax fruit or something. It was très hilarious. Your buddy Zoë tried to muffle her reaction with her mouthpiece and it uh, didn't work out so well."

"You know Zoë?"

"Of course. Pretty sure she's the only brass player I've ever seen in a dress. Other than Simon, of course."

"Heh." Simon was the kind of trumpet player your mother warned about.

"Everyone feels bad for you about Fräulein German scrape reed over there," Chris says.

Zach pauses mid-swab, then pulls the ribbon of silk the rest of the way through his oboe. "You know about German versus French scraping?"

"No, I just have the pleasure of sitting next to whiny oboists all the time." Chris gives his douchey gold headjoint a fond little polish with his douchey scarf. They weren't _outside_ , for God's sake. "I mean, everyone feels bad for _themselves_ of course, but you've got to attempt to _blend_ with that. It sucks. It makes you look bad even if you're right."

Zach laughs, glad the brass are clearing out too, now. Glad, for once, that the paranoia of a crack in his oboe forces him to stay latest and swab the most obsessive compulsively. Not annoyed, for once, that flautist vanity compels the likes of Chris Pine to stay just as late.

Chris's case clicks closed. "I took theory in high school," he says abruptly. "And my mom made me take piano. And my _piano_ teacher made me sing, like, you know, solfège and shit."

"So . . . you're one of those privileged assholes that comes from a musical family, I take it?"

Chris laughs. "Ohhh yeah." Zach's surprised that he appears to have a sense of humor. "I've got two sisters who play horn and clarinet. Three guesses what our parents play."

"Wait, so, you _actually_ have a family wind quintet?" Double reed parents certainly explained Chris's random knowledge of the various schools of thought on reed scraping. "And here I thought that was the stuff of legend . . . "

"I wasn't into it of course," Chris says, rearranging his music alphabetically because Zach is still shoving knives and plaques and bits of emergency cigarette paper into his case. "You know, as a boy of six."

"What, did you start on a mini violin too?"

"Nah, my hands were miraculously wide enough for an actual flute. I really resisted it for a while, but then at some point I realized that I did actually like it, or at least that I was good at. I kind of hate the whole culture of the classical music world, though—all that sellout pops shit and special treatment and _connections_ . . . I dunno, it just pisses me off. Whatever happened to quality playing?"

"You do know that woodwinds sounded like shit up until like the '40's, right?"

"I _do_ know that, thank you," Chris says, just addressing the closed leather folder on his stand now. "I also know that we only have terms like 'virtuosi' because most players used to suck ass. But we're supposed to be the new generation, right? Aren't we supposed to breathe new life and new, over-trained standards into our most noble discipline?"

" . . . Bring balance to the force?" Zach suggests.

"Well that too, _obvi_."

"You're . . . a bit asinine, you know."

Chris laughs in that surprised sounding way.

*

Zach's considering breaking the offending reed by tearing into its fickle cane with his teeth, then taping its mutilated body to the piano as a warning to others when he notices a pair of, yes, actually cerulean eyes looking amused through the tiny window on the practice room door.

Zach sighs and opens it.

Chris slips awkwardly into the cramped room, hair catching on the carpeted wall for a minute before he finds a nice unoccupied corner to stand in, holding his flute with carelessly scribbled over sheet music under his arm. "I heard our Mozart from down the hall."

" _Our_ Mozart," Zach says bitterly, but it's been plaguing him so persistently that he's prepared to surrender its sloppy seconds to the flutes just as the composer had.

Chris laughs. "I meant 'our' like us _and_ you guys. Both of us."

"We're a 'we' now?"

Chris holds up his copy of the concerto. "I'm bored of drilling Midsummer Night's Dream, and judging by the screams and the B-natural crows I'm hearing five doors down, you're bored of reed making." He taps his music with his flute. "We should go antiphonal on this bad boy."

"Why, you know a nice echoey church with suitable rafters?"

"Shut up. It just means like any call and response now, Mr. I-have-a-boner-for-Gregorian-chant."

"Well. Who doesn't?"

Chris puts his part on top of the piano, moves to Zach's right and flips Zach's music back to the first movement before Zach can protest. "Here. You start. I'll play the accompaniment two before. Ready?" And he's set to cue him, flute to lips.

Zach blinks at the way Chris's breath mists over metal. "You're just gonna transpose?"

"Uh, to what? Hello, Zachary, I'm another non-transposing instrument, nice to meet you!"

Zach knows that. He also knows that Chris smells good. Hadn't noticed it before in orchestra, but then again they'd been sitting down and Chris hadn't been exerting himself with evil Mendelssohn excerpts for an hour. He smelled like charisma. And a hint of sandalwood.

Chris blows through his flute to test whatever it is they test when they do that. Fingers flip over the keys resonantly. "Anyway, don't you have to transpose études in your lessons?"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"My teacher made me memorize this in D and C. And Db, but that's a whole other thing . . ."

Zach shudders. And then they're playing.

Zach's reed sucks but Chris rolls his mouthpiece out considerately, like flutes always refuse to do, citing The Proper Method or whatever the fuck. Chris dovetails nicely into the phrases that overlap, and Zach has no idea how the two of them know when to stop or start playing—it's that impulse of feeling it more than seeing or reading it, that unspoken sense of being on the same musical wavelength and the strange intimacy that comes with that.

Chris plays under him, then magically continues the accompaniment line after Zach drops out—and who actually knows the accompaniment line anyway? Plays right up to the cadenza and Zach glances over but Chris is watching him in what he presumes is a go ahead so Zach just starts playing his cadenza, painstakingly constructed after the study of countless notable recordings. He's sure Chris's cadenza changes on a whim with every performance.

Zach pauses for breath in the middle of it and Chris jumps in unexpectedly with a consequent phrase to Zach's antecedent, turning to him now so he can watch Zach dead-on and Zach's caught of guard, plays a non-chord-tone but somehow manages to resolve it around Chris's counterpoint.

Chris is the kind of player who breathes the unexplained musical instinct for precognition that tells him which notes will work with Zach's line; either that or Zach's arrangement was more structural than he'd thought. Chris plays low, then scalar, then jumping an octave to play a third above Zach's line for a swift little recapitulation of a theme, and Zach sustains the next dominant note on a whim, sforzando-piano so Chris can improvise around flutishly, rich with such perfect Classical character. They lock eyes with Chris's tempo-setting intake of breath and play the last phrase of the piece in parallel octaves.

Chris's still poised, flute up and breath held to let the note ring but Zach doesn't care, exhales hugely and gasps for breath, laughing and lightheaded with it and with exhilaration. Chris laughs, panting, wipes his bruised mouth of saliva and blinks at him. And they stay like that, just breathing hard at each other in the close room for a small eternity.

Chris laughs again. Zach laughs again.

"Hey," Chris says. "You know, I play a decent hautbois, myself. I'll prove it. Got any shitty reeds I can use?"

He's not gonna hand over his Lorée to this sneaky bastard. It's unheard of. Even his _teacher_ asks permission first. Zach has a fucking insurance policy on this thing.

Chris is looking at him from under his lashes, mouth dark pink and wet with playing.

"Yeah okay," Zach says, surrendering his oboe. He really can't catch his breath.

Chris does seem to know where to put his fingers, and I mean, flute and oboe fingerings weren't all that different. It was just that . . .

"You've got to curve them more," Zach says.

"What, like this?"

"No, your fingers are too flat."

"Wait, what if I just . . ."

"No, hold on, _hold on_ , man."

"Prematurely large hands, remember?" Chris is laughing in that startled sort of way when Zach curves Chris's fingers better, realigns his wrist, angles the oboe differently. "Wink wink, nudge nudge, et cetera."

Zach laughs. Apparently fixing Chris's hands had meant standing in his personal space. From here, Chris's hyper-attentive gaze didn't seem so hyper. It was easier to look at now, like the sun at sunset. Just a different perspective.

Zach has to hold Chris's arm at the proper angle the whole time he plays.

*

"Where are we going?"

"Just come on." Chris leads him, dry warm hand encircling his wrist, out the stage door.

Zach's glad he left his oboe inside. It's a little too cold to not be wearing a coat, but the heat of the stage and the dress rehearsal, not to mention the layers of tux and bow tie and nerves, were protection enough.

There's a collection of shadowy figures behind the percussion truck emitting smoke and laughter. Jovial and carefree and, yup, that's definitely pot.

Bassists.

"Princess!" one of them says. Chris high fives him and Zach's eyebrows climb.

"Little nickname I have," Chris tells him. "Yo, I just want a hit. And I think it's my duty as a brownnoser to tell you guys to take it easy. This isn't Don fucking Giovanni. You've got, like, more than one note, I do believe."

"Don fucking Giovanni? I'd see _that_ opera," says the bassist, handing Chris a joint.

Zach hasn't smoked pot since freshman year. And back then they'd just panicked and thrown it out the window when the kid next door had slammed a door on his way to the bathroom in what they were sure was a raid.

Chris's lips curve around the joint, easily, excitingly not-allowed. Blinks at Zach through a smoky exhale and offers it to him. Chris, who's black and white in the nightfall, all brightly lit hair and darkly badass eyes. With the tux to complete the look, he looks like a movie star.

Zach grabs the joint from him, so sure his Tabuteau school breath control will carry over into smoking.

Chris thumps him on the back as he coughs. Laughs and snatches the thing and hands it off to another bassist.

"Fuck," Chris says, but it sounds contented, watches the passing Pitt students like he's analyzing them. It's Friday night in Oakland, which was the highlight of the week for every college kid in town, but for people like he and Chris tonight was a highlight in their careers. "I was gonna transfer before this year, you know. I bombed my audition for orchestra last summer."

"To CIM, right?"

"Yup. Well." He digs into the grass with a formerly shiny shoe. "I didn't exactly try out at Cleveland, so it's not like I could have even gone there if I dropped out here, but, you know."

". . . Why didn't you try out?" Zach asks, afraid the slow onset of THC is making him miss something.

"I dunno." Chris's focus is on the ground. "Didn't wanna not get in, I guess. I know some of the faculty, too."

"Shouldn't that, um, help?"

"Probably. I dunno. It's nerve-wracking. The expectation's too high. I dunno. Whatever, I do like CMU. I was just sick of doing shitty gigs everywhere outside of school. But now we've got J.J. and we're actually doing decent rep, so. It's all good."

They don't talk for a minute, but Zach can hear Chris breathing, seems to feel his heat or at least his agitation. Wants to fix it. "Well. I'm worried about this concert, man, I dunno about you. My reeds suck."

Chris laughs. "Oboists always say that."

"But it's true."

"Well, yeah."

"Fuck you."

"Heh." Chris grins at him. "What a sad sad story, the life of an oboist. Chained to a desk with hot pink thread, doomed to shape and scrape and tie and whatever the fuck it is you guys do in that mysterious reed room of yours . . ."

"Chop. And guillotine."

"Nice," Chris admits.

"Oh come on, you don't have to make your instrument all over again every day. We have to worry about the weather and carpal tunnel and cane width and . . ." Zach frowns at him. "The fuck are you doing?"

"It's the world's smallest violin, yo!" He saws the imaginary instrument. "Oh woe is Zach! Reeds and things! How uncommonly tragic . . ."

Zach giggles, confident he can blame its girlishness on the pot later if need be. He whistles the Brahms Violin Concerto. Badly.

Chris laughs, leans on him. "Was that supposed to be the Brahms? Ahaha. _Oh shit_! Hold on, dude." He mimes putting the violin in its case and deposits it in Zach's listless hand. "There ya go." Laughs again, eyes reddening a bit now, or maybe that was just _Zach's_ eyes reddening and it just made Chris's eyes look red. Or maybe it was the moonlight or, or something. It was something . . .

"Fuck," Zach laughs. "You do this before every concert?"

"Why, what do you do in band, make friendship bracelets and braid each other's hair?" Chris leans on him. He's so leany, Chris is. So leany, and the black tux really goes well with his . . . with him. He looks so _earnest_ , and when he talks again his voice is so luxuriously grainy: "It's Tchaikovsky, come on."

"Fuck yeah. Tchaik is fucking poetry, man."

"The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies," Chris capers. "It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess'd them . . . "

Zach blinks. "What is happening."

"It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick'd by the indolent waves . . . I am cut by bitter and angry hail, I lose my breath . . ."

"Channeling William Shatner, much?"

"Fuck you, Zach. Steep'd amid honey'd morphine—pot, see, same diff, dude—my windpipe throttled in fakes of death,  at length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles . . . and that . . . we call Being."

"Okay, seriously, what was in that joint?"

"Leaves of Grass, apparently. Listen, playing high is amazing," Chris says in conclusion. "Berlioz chased the dragon, and we got Symphonie Fantastique out of that. Think of all we could accomplish!"

"Berlioz? Really? This is the shining example of good decision making you're going with?"

"Fuck yeah. Hey. Hey. Listen, I dunno if you know this, but I'm kind of a nerd about that stuff, music history and shit . . ."

" _You're a nerd?_ " Zach gasps.

Chris laughs, hits him lightly. Leans on him, probably because of the odd thickness to the air. "Fuck off."

A cellist pops out of the stage door and calls them inside. Ten minutes, he says, and shit, Zach better soak a reed . . .

*

Zach gets this epic déjà vu that only happens on stages. Sitting in his tux in the same part of the stage, surrounded by clarinet riffs from behind and scooping tuning timpani, the smell of rosin and cork grease and musty instrument cases and hot stage lights and heavy curtains. He thinks of every good reed day and bad reed day, every time he'd been on first and ready for the A or not ready, every exciting fear of the upcoming performance, every friend in every section from every year of his life. He remembers stupid things about sitting here long past: delirious with a cold at regionals in 11th grade, high on the foreign feeling of being on tour two summers ago, _actually_ high right now . . .

The playing itself is better than sex. Zach knows it's a weird thing to think, and maybe he's just perverted like that, but he also knows that everybody else feels the same thing, even if they don't put it in exactly those words.

The collective strife, the give-and-take between every single player, the unspoken instinctive consciousness that has them all on exactly the same page with tempo and slight rallentandos and where to drop and where to build.

And when they all arrive at the wide brassy tonic chord in the finale Zach gets chills all over and the feeling like his heart is full and his mind is blank with the pure precipice of orgasm.

The chills melt and turn to fire with the ups and downs of the musical lines assaulting him from all sides. The notes Zach's blasting out feel gorgeous in his lungs, like singing along to Kesha on full blast after a few drinks, which is a sacrilegious comparison in the face of Tchaikovsky, but it's undeniably fitting.

The winds build, back and forth with the strings, brass sneaking in, higher and louder and more until the music has to back up a minute to catch its breath, flurry of fragile scales before the brassy recap. The piccolo climbs sharply above and every ensuing chord presses so insistently one into the next. Zach is swept up in it, the solid syncopation of the cymbals to fall back against as the music stutters on its way to greater intensity. Everything going disjointed before all the parts are magnetized back to one another, locking into sync in one red and palpable moment. Deafening breath of silence followed by hard all-encompassing unison that makes it so their collective musical mind melds into a single purpose, open and reliant upon one another and shaky with the thrum of every interval. That brilliant Russian rush to the finish, those last orchestra hits that feel like gunshots and Zach can't quite see properly and then it's just over.

J.J. holds his baton up for awhile, sweaty at the temple and connected to them by the soul in this moment. The baton lowers slowly with everyone holding their breath, shaking and poised with horns up, then drops at last to J.J.'s side.

The orchestra lets out a collective sigh and Zach can feel Chris breathing again beside him, his personality emerging now from the absorption of the music. It's hot and heart-racing and utterly brainlessly physically thrilling in the aftershocks. Zach doesn't understand why _more_ people don't compare it to sex.

It could very well be that he just needs to get laid.

*

Simon's basement apartment may be windowless and cramped, with a questionably angled floor and suspicious stains on every surface, but it's about 1,000 times better than a one-room dorm room on campus with some anal retentive RA down the hall.

Zach glances around from the door, then has to spend a good couple of minutes trying to _close_ the door, but it keeps springing back to mock him, squelching disturbingly.

A blur of plaid intervenes, shoves the door shut with its shoulder and a grunt. "'Sup," Chris says. "Good concert."

"Yeah, you too," Zach says. "I mean, thanks." Doesn't Chris have a gaggle of fawning freshman flautists to occupy himself with? Or the entire ditzy viola section or something?

Chris pats Zach's arm randomly, warm after the chilly night. "Yo, you need a drink. Come on."

Zach follows. "Glasses?" he says dumbly.

" . . . Plastic cups?"

"No, you. I mean, you're—" Zach points.

"Oh. Yeah." Chris pushes them up his nose, a bit unbearably endearing. "I only really wear contacts for rehearsal so I'm not looking up into blurriness at the conductor."

Zach shrugs. "There are some conductors I wear glasses for intentionally for precisely that reason. Like, when they're conducting Mars in some weird hemiola pattern."

Chris is smiling. "I'll have to try that in quintet. It's awkward staring into Olivia's eyes all the time."

"Hey, uh, and what's the name of that quintet, again?"

Chris mumbles something.

"Sorry, didn't quite catch that?"

Chris sighs. "The. The Winds of Change."

Zach grins.

"Fuck off, man. _She_ named it. And anyway, chamber music names are always lame. What's yours called?"

"Revenge of the Fifth."

". . . You bastard. That's fucking awesome. Fuck you."

They procure two cheerfully red party cups, toast to the death of the Tchaikovsky, and drink.

Zach makes a face. "What is this swill?"

Chris is making the same face. "Fuck if I know. Come on, there's vodka in the kitchen."

"What kitchen?"

It isn't like the _entire_ wind section was there. Zoë didn't do parties because she had honors classes and a boyfriend to tend to. And Simon had invited mostly other brass players, the better woodwinds at school, some kids from Duquesne they knew from community gigs, and Zach, who was now deemed talented enough to mingle with the kind of players who had to cut their resume _down_ to one page. Zach had been stuck in the mediocrity of band for way too long, and there was no way he was going back to that, easy and reliable as it may have been.

"All right, Zach?" Simon says, squints and points at him. Why the fuck wasn't Simon at the Royal Academy or something, anyway? "We had 18th Century Counterpoint together, didn't we?"

"Oh. Ha. Yeah. You did everything on Finale even though Lindelof's allergic to computers, right?"

"Well, fuck, it's not my fault he's stuck in the bloody Baroque Era in and out of school." Simon gestures around. "It's not much, but it's home. And I personally don't find it quite worthwhile to spend the evening with Yelchin, concertmaster wunderkind extraordinaire, even if he does have that ridiculous house in Squirrel Hill that his parents pay for. And the _entire_ viola section at his party . . ." Simon sighs wistfully.

Chris laughs. "Fucking commies, the lot of them."

"With their flawless technique and formidable lyricism," Simon adds darkly. "Beaten out of them in the old country, no doubt. Oh, don't look so scandalized, Zach. It's just us minority Caucasians here."

"Hey," John Cho says from the makeshift bar.

Simon pshaws. "You don't count, mate."

"And that's supposed to be _less_ racist?" John comes over with a bottle of Smirnoff in hand. "So . . . are we gonna play or what?"

"Indeed we are. Do help me with the table."

Chris frowns. "And _why_ the are you moving that?"

Simon sighs long-sufferingly. "Because it'll give us extra space to do _activities_ , Chris. God . . . "

Zach stands back a little bit to make way, John passing closeby in his undershirt and dress pants. It's distracting for a minute, what with his hair all rakishly mussed like that and his arm muscles working with effort. Zach blinks.

Simon's still wearing his tux, too, like the whole thing, and he's sweating because of it. Zach's ditched the jacket, at least.

Apparently Chris was the only person with the presence of mind to slip into something more comfortable, and he looked out of place in his glasses and flannel and easy smiles, not the intense professionalism of school and career. Zach doesn't think he's ever seen him so relaxed.

"All right!" Simon says, sweating even more now. "You in, Zach?"

"Uh . . ."

"It's super dorky," Chris says, nudges into him, and it's so hot down in the basement apartment that Zach's overheated for a minute. "You'll love it."

John's procured a MacBook from somewhere and set it on the table, clicking intently in the background while Simon says, "You'll know MusicTheory.net, of course?"

"Uh . . ."

Chris laughs at him. "Simon here has devised a drinking game around the interval trainer."

"I'm sorry, were you expecting me to devote my time to _study_ , freshman year?" He shakes his head, pushing shot glasses across the table to each of them. "Gentleman, we're all accomplished principal players here, so . . . "

"I'm not," John says.

Simon waves him off. "Principal picc, then, whatever. Anyway it's very simple, the better to facilitate continued play as the evening progresses. Someone plays the interval; the rest of us shout it out. You say the wrong one, you've got to take a shot." Simon looks quite pleased with himself. "I imagine Liszt and company must have hit on some version of this in the fancy parlors of yesteryear."

"Mozart, at least," Chris says, grabs the bottle and pours their shots.

"Okay are we ready?" John says, fingers hovering over the space bar. He takes their silence as a go-ahead and then there's two MIDI piano notes floating up from the speakers.

"Five!"  
"Perfect fourth!"  
"Here Comes the Bride!"

"Uhm, just 'five', Chris?"

"Uhm, there's only one kind of five, _John_. At least I didn't say 'Here Comes the Bride.'"

" _Anyway_ ," John says. "It's a perfect fourth. Drink up, Chris."

Simon frowns. "What's wrong with saying 'Here Comes the Bride'? It _is_ a fourth, isn't it?"

Chris's face is red from the shock of alcohol. He wipes his mouth before saying to Simon, "It's not actually called 'Here Comes the Bride', dumbass! Wagner? Lohengrin? Any of this ringing a bell?"

Simon gapes at him, betrayal etched into his every feature. "Why do you hate me, Chris?"

"O- _kay_ ," John says. "Someone else go. Zach?"

Zach almost jumps, having forgotten he was there as much as they had. "Yeah, sure." He leans over to push the space bar while Chris pours himself another shot.

"Bali Ha'i!" Simon screams.

Johns eyes widen and Chris winces. " _Dude_ ," they chorus.

"The fuck is Bali Ha'i?" Zach says, despite himself.

Simon sighs. "Oh, you lot are pathetically limited when it comes to your musical education, aren't you? It's from South Pacific! That grand old show . . ."

"Dude," Chris reiterates. "No more fucking song titles, okay? This is ridiculous. We are classically-fucking-trained musicians." He does another shot just for funsies.

". . . Major seventh," John says, eyeing them. "We _are_ still playing this, right?" He exchanges a look with Zach. "Okay, you know what? I've gotta walk back to Bloomfield later. I'll man the damn computer." He walks over to hit the space bar again.

"Star Trek!"  
" _There's aaaaaa place for us . . ._ "

John blinks at them. " . . . _Minor_ seventh. It has a name, guys,"

"I thought we said no song names?" Chris accuses.

"I didn't _name_ a song," Simon sniffs. "I _sang_ a song."

"Well, that's debatable . . ."

" _You_ just said 'Star Trek'!" Simon says. "How are _we_ to know you didn't mean the Next Generation theme or something?"

Chris pauses, contemplative, shotglass to his lips which he rolls back and forth while he thinks. Zach watches the alcohol slosh around and Chris's tongue dart out to touch the coolness of the glass. "Wait wait. What _is_ that interval?"

"I . . ." Simon's agitation drains. "Huh. Dunno. Zach?"

"I'm not the Trekkie, here," Zach says.

" _Next_!" John says, hitting the spacebar.

"Third."  
"Third."  
" _Minor_ third."

"Thank you Zach," John sighs, then points at Chris and Simon. "You two, bottoms up."

"Fuck," Chris says, downs the shot with a dizzying flash of his throat. The sweat at his temple glistens. Puts the glass down and _ahh_ 's and looks at Zach like his gaze had been roaming obsessively but has finally settled on its prey. "You haven't even drunk anything yet, man."

"Nopers," Zach says. "And I—"

Chris is close all of a sudden, puts Zach's still full shotglass into his hand, all damp palms and a whisper of arm hair. "You've gotta catch up. It's not fair." Chris blinking at him up close like that really isn't fair, so Zach does the shot just to blur the image a little.

Chris grins and claps him on the back. "Good man."

"Next," John says, followed by a clash of pitches.

Chris opens his mouth but Simon smushes a hand in his face preemptively. Chris frowns cross-eyed at it. Simon gasps in air before howling, "Ma- _riiii_ -aaaaa!"

"Wrong," John says.

"Wait what?"

" _Fifth_!" Chris says triumphantly. "Finally, jeez . . ."

"Bollocks." Simon does a shot.

*

By the time they've started repeating intervals Zach's had more than one shot.

"'S'hot in here," he says, not realizing he'd vocalized it.

"No wonder," Chris says, low-pitched, "you're wearing _this_ fucking thing. Here." He undoes Zach's bow tie with fumbling fingers and lets it dangle loosely around his neck. Zach sighs in relief and reaches up to pop a button or two and crashes into Chris's still lingering hand and Chris jumps, laughs, red-faced with booze.

"I'm bored," Chris announces, withdrawing and leaving Zach cold. "Come on." The others play on in the background, or at least drink on. Zach follows Chris down the empty hallway, through the door and out into a sudden cement laundry room.

It's Downy-fresh and hot in there—that odd autumn perspective of heat that makes it a positive no matter what, whereas mid-July it'd be the worst of nuisances. Artificial light pools randomly, spotlighting the washer and dryer but leaving swatches of shadow by the stairs to the upper apartments. Someone's got their laundry in the washer and the whole room hums with it.

"Minor sixth," Zach diagnoses vaguely, still dazzled by fluorescence.

"Dumbass love theme from the Star Wars prequels is a minor sixth," Chris says. "But Han and Leia's theme is a _major_ sixth, so that's a fun little bit of subtext to redeem the prequels with, I guess. _And_ it proves John Williams has still got it."

Zach watches Chris watching him. "You're a dork," he says at length.

Chris smiles quick, a little unsteady on his feet.

"It's kind of arbitrary," Zach says, reaching for subject matter in this Chris-infested space. "Our major."

"What? 'Studying' music? Oh come on, most people know it's just silly, deep down."

"Most people," Zach agrees. "And then there's that guy who wrote 'Beethoven's Hair'."

"Mm." Chris is focused on him. Chris is on the move. Chris has got Zach's unraveled tie in both hands and yanks him the last few inches into the kiss. Swift slam of bodies and mouths and hot visceral reality in Zach's brain/groin. Zach kisses back for a long time, and he even gets Chris to moan when Zach's tongue licks into his mouth.

After a small eternity Chris tears away to breathe, grins at him.

"You have terrible breath control for a flautist," Zach says, but it comes out like a growl.

Chris laughs, sucks at Zach's bottom lip vaguely. Zach sways with drunkenness and can't seem to stop himself from talking:

"Why didn't you accost me before the concert, anyway?" he asks.

"Um, hello, my chops?"

"Hm. And what exactly were you planning on doing with your mouth that would jeopardize your embouchure?"

Chris smiles crookedly. "Guess you'll find out, huh?" He pushes Zach enough to get him stumbling, then follows and catches his hands and corrals him up against the dryer. Hands busy with Zach's belt while he kisses his neck.

"Oh God . . . what are you doing . . ."

Chris leers. "You need to get _Lied_."

"Oh God," Zach says again, more exasperated than lustful. "That was so lame I think I threw up a little . . ."

"Could be the vodka," Chris says wisely, yanking Zach's dress pants down a bit and placing one talented set of fingers over the front of Zach's boxers. "Mm . . . for me?"

"Obviously," Zach gasps, unable to stop from nudging up into the pressure.

Chris kisses him wetly and drops to his knees, looks up at him over the rim of his glasses before licking his lips and licking a hot stripe up Zach's cock through silk. And then again without anything in the way.

Zach has been turned on practically since arriving at a concert hall that night, but he was also drunk, and it defied all logic that he'd be this far along this quickly. But then he takes one look at a Chris's head bobbing back and forth over his cock with those eyes glancing up at him every so often while he plays with the tip like a fucking Tootsie pop and _that_ defied all logic too, so . . .

Zach comes too soon, but Chris probably doesn't mind, sore mouth muscles from Tchaikovsky and all, and boy did that come out wrong, but I mean, Zach hasn't been forming coherent thoughts all night—why should he start now?

Chris is there in his hazy line of vision again, beaming with wet dark lips. Smudged glasses and his hair's kind of hopelessly wrecked, although Zach doesn't even remember grabbing it. Residual waves of orgasm seep slowly through Zach's blood and he laughs at the fact of Chris there and reaches out to touch his face on sleepy undefined impulse.

"Don't make me say it," Chris grins.

"Uh?" Zach can't quite keep up in light of the way Chris is smoldering at him.

"I'm a virtuoso on the skin flute, too."

"That was . . . truly vile." He blinks at himself. "The joke, not the, uh . . ."

Chris continues to smolder. Zach's really got to do something about that.

Zach snaps out of his stupor and pulls Chris to him, hot and real and depressingly clothed, kisses from mouth to ear, sucking on the lobe by the time he's reversed them and Chris's back hits the dryer in harmony with his moan. Zach pushes heavy-feeling hands up under his shirt to tantalize and Chris seems to approve, moaning additional, connected moans in Zach's ear and pawing at Zach's hopelessly disheveled clothes for purchase.

Zach tries and fails to get Chris's jeans out of the way. "A little help?"

"Mm." He shimmies out of them expertly.

"What, did you paint those on?"

Chris laughs but his brows furrow in the middle of it, presses his forehead to Zach's desperately and kisses him and breathes, "Please."

Zach doesn't need to be asked twice, tries to lift Chris up and of course that doesn't work but Chris seems to get the idea anyway, hops up onto the dryer, which is at a suspiciously facilitating height, really.

Zach leaves messy, unimportant kisses on Chris's thigh and hip, lets his hand work Chris's cock until he's got him squirming enough, begging in unintelligibles and utterly tense, then he takes the head into his mouth and sucks experimentally.

Chris seems to like that, if the clawing hand in his hair is any indication. Zach takes him in deeper, can't seem to look away from the slow scrunch of Chris's eyes and the continual twist of his features. Mouth falling open when Zach's got a good rhythm going, impatience and pleasure battling for dominance on his face and Zach moves his head faster just to see which one wins out, grips the base of Chris's cock and strokes his balls for good measure.

It gets Chris's eyes to fly open and his voice to modulate from moans into _Please_ 's, scattered through his quickening breath and multiphonic with Chris's rasp, too-tight hand in Zach's hair and Zach's embouchure is getting overtaxed but he's got to get him off, got to taste him, got to see him . . .

"Oh, I'm, I'm— _I'mgonna_ —"

The burst of salty heat on Zach's tongue explains well enough what Chris was gonna.

Later, on a horribly dusty cement floor in ruined concert attire, Zach runs his hands through Chris's hair and revels in the warm weight of his head on Zach's shoulder, in that that ragged, lovely shaken-out feeling of release.

"I've wanted to fuck you for _awhile_ ," Chris sighs.

"You're gay?"

"Not usually. To be quite honest I'm too focused on music to have a sex life. I'll take what I can get."

"What a glowing review."

Chris apologizes with his mouth, wetly suckingly on Zach's neck.

" . . . Uh." Fuck. "You're forgiven."

Chris laughs.

There's a loud bang like a door slamming. And this stomping sound like someone coming down the stairs. And then Zach remembers their surroundings and realizes that that's probably exactly what it is.

"Fuck," Chris hisses. "Come on!"

They put themselves together hastily and escape.

*

"You're on New World, too, huh?" Zach says, sitting down in the principal oboe chair again. He'd seen the assignments posted on the wall outside, but he wasn't sure what else to say.

"Just reading today, I think," Chris says, focused on his music and working out trill fingerings for the second movement. "Who's English horn?"

"Not me," Zach says. Fiddles with his reed. "Big piece for you."

"For you, too."

"Eh, sort of. I'm not on English horn, so."

Chris shrugs, still staring intently ahead, although he's stopped fingering actual notes. "I'm sure you can navigate it okay. It's not exactly unknown territory, is it?"

". . . Kind of is."

Chris smiles at his stand. "And you still wanna play? I'm sure Olivia wouldn't mind subbing . . ."

"Um, fuck no. I think I can handle it, dude."

Chris smiles more, lets his flute sag a little, mouthpiece wavering on his bottom lip and reminding Zach of the shotglass he'd rested there, his glasses and his drunken laughter. "We've got time 'til the rest of the cellos show up. They've got a master class in the recital hall and J.J. can't exactly start without them." Looks at him, looks carefree. "Come on."

"Where are we . . . ?"

"Just come on."

Zach surprises himself by laughing. "Yeah, okay."

*


End file.
